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THE CIVIL WAR IN HISTORY 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED 
AT THE REUNION 



OF THE 



52d Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1912 
AT GREENFIELD, MASS. 



The 50th Anniversary of the Enlistment of the Regiment 

in the U. S. Army for Service in the Civil War, 

by Lieutenant Asa A. Spear of Company G. 



NORTHAMPTON, MASS. 

THE GAZETTE PRINTING COMPA.VY 

1913 



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The Civil War in History 



A modern writer has said: '' History is a diary of the 
luiinan race." Such a diary does not disch)se all its teach- 
ings to the writer, nor to the actors in the events recorded. 
If faithfully and truly written, the story told will unfold 
as the years go by, and present to those who read, lessons 
and truths unthought of when the record was written. 

The diary of the Oivil War has been written by many 
and distinguished historians, some actors in its scenes, and 
others not, who have sought to record the great and con- 
trolling events of that bloody struggle from different view 
points and often colored by personal experiences, or told 
in such way as to add luster to the names and deeds of 
certain distinguished actors. But these diaries have given 
us, in the main, a reliable story, from which we may draw 
safe and abiding lessons for the nation's future guidance. 

Many diaries of the Oivil War have been written in 
humbler fashion, by less distinguished people, and record- 
ing the deeds of humbler men, which are none the less 
truthful, and which, none the less, contain the richer 
teachings of those strenuous years. Eacii one of us, com- 
rades, has written such a diary, either upon paper, or in 
the hearts and lives of those near to us. We have narrated 
our personal experiences and vividly described scenes 
which we have witnessed and in which we have been 
actors, to those who have not forgotten the stories, and 



by whom lessons, hidden in them, are being discovered, 
and wrought into the sturdy manhood of the generations 
that have already followed ours. 

By the aid of memory we sweep back through the years 
and over the experiences of life, and great truths rush 
upon us which we did not see when we were passing 
through them. 

Many and wonderful are the lessons already learned by 
this retrospect, by the study of these diaries. But fifty 
years is too short a space of time to give a perspective 
sufficient to disclose all that is stored in these written 
and unwritten records. We have already learned much. 
Mighty influences have already proceeded from them. But 
the historian of the generations yet to come, as distance 
gives him a fuller and more perfect view of the events 
and scenes in which we were actors, will find lessons and 
truths hidden in them, which have not been disclosed to 
us and which we have not imagined. 

The nation is nobler and better by reason of what has 
already been learned. She has become more powerful for 
righteousness and has a mightier influence among the na- 
tions, by reason of the unfolding and strengthening of the 
true spirit of liberty which the Oivil War brought. 

Our conceptions of loyalty and patriotism have changed 
since those days. The loyal American, to-day, is not one 
who seeks above all else, to defend his country against 
foreign aggression, but one, who, acting from a higher pur- 
pose, seeks to make her foremost in promoting peace and 
good-will among the nations. Peace, not war, is now the 
objective of every true American who has learned the les- 
sons of the Oivil War. It was in ante-bellum days that 
we boasted that America was the greatest country in the 
world for prowess, wealth and bigness ; now we are proud 
to proclaim our land the leader of the world in the strife 
for universal peace. Now we boast not so much of the 
number of square miles within our borders, or of the mill- 
ions of our people, or of our enormous wealth, all of 

4 



which surpass the record of fifty years ago, as of our power 
to help the world. Ringing out in clearest tones from 
every mountain and hilltop, so that it is heard around the 
world, is our new clarion call, "We must help all men to 
be free." "We have learned through the bitter teaching 
of the Civil War, that the liberty which our fathers gave, 
is a precious gift entrusted to us, that we may pass it on 
to those who have it not. The conception of a greater 
missionary enterprise than that on which our country has 
embarked during these later years, has never entered the 
thought of man since the angels, above Bethlehem\s plain, 
on that first Christmas night, proclaimed: "Peace on 
Earth, Good Will toward Men." A new spirit, a new 
patriotism, beside which the old appear weak and unde- 
veloped, have possessed our thoughts and purposes. 

Before the Civil War the first thought of American pa- 
triots was for themselves ; their energies were directed 
towards the building up of a nation invincible in prowess, 
unsurpassed in wealth. Our patriotism was self-centered 
and confined in narrow limits. As the years go by, and 
we read and re-read the diary of that war, and study the 
bearing of its great events upon each other and upon the 
nation, new and broader and nobler ideas are constantly 
unfolded to us. Clearer and clearer stands out in bold 
perspective, the idea that after all the real and greatest 
object of the war was to help others who desperately 
needed help ; to awaken American patriots to a knowledge 
of the fact that they had a priceless gift of freedom, in- 
herited from their fathers, which they were selfishly keep- 
ing to themselves, while the world was calling for a share 
in the treasure. 

We commenced the bestowal of our inheritance upon 
those needing it, by sharing with the oppressed within 
our own borders. Our charity commenced at home. We 
thought we enlisted in the country's service to preserve 
the union of the States, but have we not learned in these 
fifty years, that the preservation of the union was a sec- 

5 



ondary purpose, and that there was a higher and mightier 
purpose behind and above that ? A purpose which we did 
not then see, nor understand, but which time has made 
wonderfully clear ? A purpose out of which the choicest 
and richest fruits of our sacrifices have come ? That pur- 
pose Avas that we should be taught the lesson that Amer- 
ica's mission was to share her birthright with those in 
need; to give, free-handed, liberty and justice and peace 
to all the world — the lesson that by giving we should be 
enriched and exalted to a higher and mightier station than 
our fathers ever attained. 

In bestowing freedom upon the slave we not only re- 
moved the greatest burden upon our national life and 
blotted out the greatest stain upon our national honor, but 
we got our first glimpse of the reward that always comes 
from sharing our best with those in need. 

The teaching of this lesson w^as costly, very costly, and 
there may have been in it something of chastisement, for 
the dullness and inaptness to learn, which we now see so 
clearly, marked the earlier days of our national existence. 
But we learned the lesson well, and time and experience 
are fixing it more indelibly in our national character. 
This new idea has grown and broadened with advancing 
years, until the very foundations of our patriotism have 
been rebuilt. The old foundations were too narrow and 
contracted ; the last fifty years have completely changed 
our conceptions of patriotism and loyalty. The loyal 
American of to-day is a different man from the loyal 
American of fifty years ago; his ideals are higher; his 
influence mightier ; his sympathies universal; his field is 
the world. And all this is precious fruit of the Civil War, 
which we have already gathered. The future will produce 
still richer harvests. 

"When Americans became thoroughly awake to the mean- 
ing of this lesson from the Civil War, and this new spirit 
of charity and good-will sought expression, the opportu- 
nity came most unexpectedly. Cuba, most cruelly op- 

6 



pressed and in direst need, stretched out her shackled 
hands to us for help. The new spirit of loyalty to liberty 
and of exalted patriotism, which filled the sons of those 
who fought the Oivil War, responded to the call. They 
sprang to arms; struck off the shackles from the out- 
stretched hands; wrested fair Ouba from her oppressor 
and presented her to herself, dowered with a portion of 
the heritage so precious to us. And greater still was the 
outcome of that blow at tyranny. Dewey's guns, on that 
May day morning, annihilated a Spanish fieet and opened 
the doors of the poor, ignorant, uncivilized Philippino, to 
receive a share of what we had to give. Since then 
America has been a schoolmaster to these alien, but needy 
people, instructing them in the arts of peace, self-govern- 
ment and liberty; lifting them up to a higher plane of 
existence, herself pledged to give them self-government 
and civil liberty when the savage shall have had time to 
develop into the law-loving, law-abiding, enlightened 
citizen. 

Search history from the dawn of creation to this day 
and where will you find sucli another example of disinter- 
ested, unselfish bestowal of a share in a nation's choicest 
heritage, upon an oppressed and distracted people ? His- 
tory will record these glorious achievements as fruits of 
the Oivil War. 

Then again, the Oivil War produced John Hay, that 
most distinguished and masterful statesman, who taught 
the world lessons in the arts of peace, in honest, unselfish 
diplomacy and fair-dealing. He set up a new standard of 
national integrity and supplanted deceit and falsehood in 
international dealing, with straightforward honesty and 
truthfulness. Out of the Oivil War he had learned the 
lessons of the higher patriotism. At the feet of Lincoln 
he had drunk in the new spirit of righteous action, peace, 
good-will and liberty for all ; and it had developed in him 
until it produced a noble man, filled with a love for liberty 
and fair-dealing which could not and would not counte- 



nance unjust oppression of the weak. His voice sounded 
throughout the world a new and higher note of truthful- 
ness, honor and justice on the part of the strong in their 
dealings with the weak. 

He taught the world many a lesson and fearlessly cham- 
pioned the cause of righteousness everywhere. That new 
spirit in him and the courage it had given, enabled him, 
when all the great nations of Europe, in the Boxer war, 
had combined to partition distracted and helpless China, 
to hurl defiance at them all and to say: "Thou shalt 
not." And the heart and voice of America Avas behind 
him, sustaining and encouraging, and saying to him and 
them, a new spirit of liberty and justice has been born in 
us, out of the blood and sacrifice and suffering of our Civil 
War, and we will protect and defend China against the 
world with the might of our good right arm, if need be, 
and will preserve to her, her ancient possessions inviolate. 
Europe listened and heard and stopped. The dove of 
peace shortly found a resting place in China, and John 
Hay found a place on the topmost pinnacle of power and 
honor. 

The world stands aghast at these many acts of u.nselfish 
giving of our best, and wonders whence they come. His- 
tory points back to the Civil War. 

Nor is this all. Out of this new spirit of patriotism and 
good will, America has given to China the new spirit 
which is now at work, awakening the nation from her cen- 
turies long lethargy, and rebuilding and consolidating her 
civil, social and intellectual life. 

The return of the Boxer millions to China is another ex- 
ample of the working of our new spirit, which Europe does 
not yet understand. 

In all these events, the future historian w411 find deeper 
meaning and richer lessons than we have yet discovered. 

There are men who will not subscribe to all that I have 
thus far said ; men who do not believe that there is power 
enough in this new spirit of peace and good will, to de- 

8 



fend and preserve the nation. Pessimists there are and 
always have been. We had them during the Civil War 
and labelled them "Copperheads." They are now con- 
tinually telling us that the safety of the country demands 
the continued cultivation and development of the nuirtial 
spirit; and they atfirm that the martial spirit is dying 
out, and that etfeminacy and moral decline are every- 
where manifest among our young men. They maintain 
that the spirit of peace is enervating, and in the end will 
sap the very foundations of our liberty. They decry the 
trend which has made possible such results as came from 
the Spanish War, and our influence with China. Not so. 
The future historian will record that this new spirit of 
patriotism and loyalty to country is not a degenerate 
spirit. The new spirit is ennobling, uplifting, purifying, 
strengthening. All these forces are life-giving, life-sus- 
taining. The new spirit slulfs off the asperities of the old 
martial spirit and leaves it refined and purified, but wath 
all its ancient stamina intact. Because refined and puri- 
fied it is safer, surer and more enduring. The country 
will never want for defenders in time of need, nor for 
valiant sons to pass on our inherited blessings to those in 
need, so long as this new and refined spirit survives. And 
it comes from sources which can never fail. 

We can all tell stories illustrating the truth of what I 
have just said. One morning wdien the Brooklyn boys 
were enlisting for the Spanish war, my son, then just 
starting in his teens, sat pensive and thoughtful at the 
breakfast table. After a time he said: " Father, it is too 
bad." "What is too bad, my son ? " " It is too bad that 
the family has no one to send to this war. You are too old 
and I am too young." 

I was proud of that boy. You need not tell me that the 
spirit of patriotism and loyalty to country is dead or de- 
cadent. It still lives, but purified and strengthened- He 
knew that the blood of the early settlers in his mother's 
family, shed by the arrow and tomahawk of the Indian, 

9 



^ad stained the meadows and the hillsides of this beauti- 
ful Connecticut River valley; he knew that, in the public 
library at Sunderland, hung a memorial to his maternal 
great-great-grandfather as a captain in the Revolutionary 
War ; he knew that when Massachusetts called on her sons 
to repel the expected British invasion in 1812, his pater- 
nal great-grandfather responded to the call; he knew that 
the names of his father and uncle were enrolled upon the 
marble slabs in the town hall at Amherst, as soldiers in 
the Civil War, and he knew and felt, above all, that the 
spirit of his ancestors w^as in him, moving him to loyalty 
and duty. 

Comrades : You have such sons and grandsons. As you 
have held them on your knee and told them of the loyal 
service of their ancestors, of your own hard service, of the 
campfire, of the toilsome march, of the battle field, you 
have seen their bosoms heave, their eyes flash with the 
latent fire, and the fixed and loyal purpose Avithin, ex- 
pressing itself on the brow and face. You know that the 
spirit which filled your life in 1862, still lives in them 
unabated. 

The future student of history will commend with un- 
stinted praise the loyal, unfaltering and unselfish devo- 
tion of the nation to the soldiers in the field. The diary 
abounds in stories of such devotion. Every village and 
hamlet in the land has its organization to provide com- 
forts for the sick; houses were stripped of such articles 
as could be used to make lint and bandages for the 
wounded. Night and day the first thought was for the 
army at the front. 

One incident in our own history illustrates what I would 

say, an incident which has retained a w^arm place in all 

our hearts. On the 30th day of July, 1868, after a week 

of wearisome progress up the Mississippi, we land from the 

river steamer " Henry Chouteau," at that den of sin they 

call " Cairo," in Illinois, where too many of our boys fell 

victims to the temptation which lurked everywhere. 

10 



About midnight we were loaded into freight cars and 
started, overland, for home. Rations were scarce, and for 
three days we had little to eat beyond what the good peo- 
ple of the towns and villages through which we passed, 
gave us, and in their honor be it said, they treated us gen- 
erously. About two o'clock in the afternoon of August 
3rd, we reached Buffalo. The news of our coming and of 
our need, had gone before. It was Sunday. At the open- 
ing of the morning service, the church over which Rev. 
Dr. Hosmer, father of Corporal Hosmer of Company D, 
presided, received an unusual message. The Doctor an- 
nounced that the 52nd Massachusetts regiment was on its 
way home from the seige of Port Hudson, and would 
arrive in Buffalo early in the afternoon, and that the boys 
were hungry. Then he dismissed his congregation with 
the injunction that his people see that the hungry soldiers 
Avere fed. Then followed a glorious illustration of Chris- 
tianity applied. Scores of families in Bufl'alo gave up 
their Sunday dinners; kitchens, meat shops and bakeries 
were ransacked ; long tables were erected in the railroad 
station, and fairly loaded with a feast such as no 52nd reg- 
iment man had seen in many a day. Dr. Hosmer's church 
was there en masse to welcome us ; the ladies in their 
Sunday gowns to serve the viands. What a sight met our 
unsuspecting eyes as we marched into the station! And 
then the scenes that followed! Buffalo learned that day, 
how hungry men can eat, and better still, how they can 
express their gratitude for and appreciation of such gen- 
erous self-denial. Their bounty not only satisfied our 
hunger, but filled our haversacks with good things for the 
morrow. The ringing cheers which were our farewell, 
were answered by cheers and waiving handkerchiefs from 
the multitude. 

Comrades: Such scenes reveal the inner spirit which 
fills the heart of loyal America, and which is strengthen- 
ing year by year. 

Another great truth, I believe, the future student of 

11 



history will reveal, as he reads and re-reads the diary of 
the Civil War. It is that the Confederate Soldier and the 
Union Soldier, knew and felt in his inmost heart, that 
they were brothers ; that the war was a fratricidal w^ar 
which ought not to have been. Another story from our 
own history will show the reason for this belief. 

After the unsuccessful assault on Port Hudson on June 
14, 1863, three companies of our regiment, which had been 
thrown forward as skirmishers, were left in close proxim- 
ity to the Confederate earth-works. Company G was in 
an angle of those works fronting two Confederate regi- 
ments — the 49th Alabama on one side of the angle, and the 
1st Mississippi on the other, and there we remained in the 
blazing sun, protected by stumps and logs and gulches in 
the earth, most of the time till July 8th, w^hen Port 
Hudson surrendered. For three days after the assault 
the dead of our army lay about us everywhere. On the 
17th of June the bugles sounded a parley, a white flag was 
raised and parties were sent out to bury the dead. For 
nearly three hours the flag was up and many Confederates 
came out into the neutral ground between their lines and 
ours and met the men from my company, and during those 
three hours they sat upon stumps and logs and chatted as 
socially and pleasantly as though they had been brothers. 
The Confederates had the idea that they were confronted 
by a company of sharpshooters, so accurate and annoying 
had been our fire, and many of them asked to be presented 
to the officer commanding the company. They were 
greatly mistaken, however. There was no one there but a 
few farm boys and mechanics from Amherst and Sunder- 
land and Pelham. But the truth is, they had acquired 
some skill in handling Springfield rifles. 

A duel had been going on between Edgar Pomeroy, my 
orderly sergeant, and the orderly sergeant of a company 
in the 1st Mississippi. The Mississippian's favorite post 
was behind a large magnolia tree, just outside the Con- 
federate works. Pomeroy lay behind a stump two hun- 

12 



dred yards away. Many shots had been exchanged with- 
out material damage to either combatant. On the after- 
noon of the day before the truce, the Mississippian landed 
a heavy charge of buckshot in the top of the stump close 
to Pomeroy's head; then he commenced to reload, and in 
doing so exposed his right arm to Pomeroy's quick eye. 
He saw his chance, and in an instant a minnie ball was 
on its way from Pomeroy's rifle, which shattered the Con- 
federate's good right arm. His rifle fell and he did not 
finish loading. The afternoon of the truce this Mississip- 
pian was introduced to me and asked to see the man who 
shot him the day before. I called the orderly, introduced 
his victim, and for more than two hours those two men,, 
the Confederate with his arm in a sling, sat on a log and 
laughed and chatted like old friends. You would not sus- 
pect that they were aught but brothers. The major of 
the 49th Alabama asked to be brought to me. We were 
introduced by one of his men. The greeting was cordial 
on both sides. He commenced the conversation by ask- 
ing me where I came from. I answered that 1 came from 
Massachusetts. He said: ''You are a long way from 
home. What did you come down here for ? " I answered : 
" To make you fellows behave yourselves, if we can." He 
answered: ''Well, we ought never to have misbehaved." 
We sat down on a log and for an hour talked freely of the 
war, and the events which led to it. I found him to be a 
fine, well educated and intelligent gentleman. He freely 
admitted that the war never should have been ; that the 
masses of the Southern people were not at heart in favor 
of the war, but were in it because they had to be, because 
of the impetuosity and hot-headedness of their political 
leaders. Coolness and calm deliberation, he felt sure, 
would have avoided the war. 

After three hours of brotherly fellowship the bugle 
sounded the recall, the white flag went down, the men of 
both armies scurried to their covers, and instantly went 
at each other's throats like incarnate devils. For half an 

13 



hour bullets flew as if to make up for the time which had 
been lost. 

By this scene and many others like it, 1 have been led 
through the mellowing influence of the years and the 
growth of the new spirit within me, to the belief which I 
have expressed, that we were after all brothers at heart, 
loving a common country and rejoicing in a common lib- 
erty. The outside was but an appearance put on from 
force of circumstances, and because we must. 

Another fact which the future historian will make much 
of, is the abounding love which the war developed for the 
old flag in the hearts of those who followed it. I never go 
to Boston, that I do not climb Beacon Hill to the old State 
House to look upon one flag among the many which the 
old Commonwealth is preserving in the rotunda. I feel 
an impulse within me which strengthens with the years, 
that I must make this pilgrimage. And as I stand and look 
upon the flag we followed, tattered and bullet pierced, the 
tears come streaming down my face. I don't know why it 
is. I cannot help it. They come spontaneously. Do you 
say tears are unmanly ? Not such tears. They are a tes- 
timony to something within, that makes a man. That war- 
worn flag is a symbol of what we sufl'ered and endured for 
country's sake. It stands for everything we cherish most 
of home and liberty and peace. The experiences we asso- 
ciate with it, are graven on our hearts, and are among our 
most precious memories and the sight of it brings up all 
the past. That flag speaks to us, not in words, but by a 
mighty unseen influence, loaded with the lessons of the 
past, which has reached our hearts, and inspired a stronger 
love and brought us little by little into this new and bet- 
ter idea of what the Civil War really was, what it has done 
for us, and what we feel assured it will do for those who 
come after us. 

Another lesson which the future student of history will 
find, even more i)lainly written than we now And it, as he 
reads the diary of the Civil Wai- \\ritten V^y bleediiig 

14 



liearts, in desolate homes tliroiiglioiit the hind, will be the 
niagnilicently heroic character and fortitude of the women 
of the Kepublic, — of the women of the 52nd Massachusetts 
regiment. Comrades: Too little honor have we given 
them as the years have tlown ; too little appreciation of 
their sacrifices have we expressed. Fifty years ago we 
adopted them into the regiment. We went bodily to the 
front. They went with us in spirit, but bodily tarried be- 
hind to suffer and endure in secret. While their own 
hearts were sorrowful and wracked with anguish, they sent 
us loving messages of good cheer, of courage and comfort. 
They cheered us on to duty and to loyal service. We 
knew not what they endured, for we saw not, and they 
endured in secret. But when we returned and saw the 
deep lines of suffering and care graven on their faces, 
channels through which many tears had flowed ; when we 
saww'ives, mothers, sisters and sweethearts, crowned with 
grey, whom we had left, a year before, in the bloom of 
youth, then we began to learn just a little, that war had 
borne heavily upon them as well as upon us. If war had 
been, as General Sherman said, '^ Hell " to us, it had been 
none the less so to them. 

The long days of anxious waiting after stories of ship- 
w^reck and battle had reached them, the agonizing sus- 
pense which seemed could no longer be endured ; loneliness 
and desolation of heart, as vacant places ever appeared 
before them; uncertainty, disquietude, with nothing cer- 
tain to which they could anchor hope — their lot was hard 
indeed. And as the years go by, we understand and ap- 
preciate more and more what they suffered and endured. 

The heroism and indomitable courage of these women 
of the Rej)ublic was beyond the power of words to describe. 

All Hail ! Thrice Hail ! Women of the Kepublic ! 

All Hail : Thrice Hail ! Women of the S'ind Massachu- 
setts Regiment! 

While such women continue the Republic will not want 
for sons with manly courage and loyal devotion for de- 
fence, sufficient for any need. 

15 



History, in after years, will record in more glowing 
words than we can find, the sublime courage which en- 
abled you heroically to sacrifice and endure ; the exalted 
patriotism which enabled you to put country before hus- 
band, son, father, sweetheart; that sublime endurance 
which kept you to the end. 

History, ancient and modern, for many centuries, has 
sung the praises of the Spartan mother, who, when Sparta 
called, sent forth her sons with the heroic injunction: — 
" Return with your shields or upon them." No less he- 
roic was your sacrifice. No less illustrious and enduring 
will be your fame. The historian of the future will give 
you your full share of honor. 



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